It might seem like an anxious start to the new year for AirAsia X, which recently announced that it would be introducing a daily KL-Sydney service and terminating all its flights to Europe and India. Far from being in the doldrums, it’s all part of the airline’s strategy to refocus and strengthen its brand, as its CEO Azran Osman-Rani shared with SimpliFlying in our latest airline strategy podcast.

Listen to the exclusive podcast below.

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(c) 2012 SimpliFlying Podcasts

Note: The HTML5 player above should work with most modern browsers including those in mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone. However, if you’re having trouble playing the file, please use the flash player at the bottom of this post. Please also note that the podcast above has only a snippet of the interview with Azran. To delve deeper into the mind of …

Update: The campaign has been featured on Facebook Studio and also shortlisted for the Shorty Awards!
Airlines these days are chasing the elusive return on social media. And while the number of “likes” or “followers” and video views are all the rage, it’s ultimately the return on investment (ROI) that matters the most. About a year ago, AAdvantage ran possibly the most viral Facebook campaign for an airline – fans grew almost 100X in just 54 hours. But ROI numbers were not necessarily as impressive.
Now, COPA Airlines from Panama has numbers to prove a 50X ROI from their recent Facebook app – an effort for which Diego Quesada Grimaldo, their eCommerce Director, was nominated for the SimpliFlying Heroes Award last month!

Pasaporte America to promote destinations
To promote its network in the Americas, COPA recently held a Passport America sweepstakes, asking the public to tell the airline which 10 destinations they’d like to visit first if they were the winner. Participants could explore each of COPA Airlines’ 59 destinations on the map, and then select their favourite 10. One person won a trip for two to all of COPA’s 59 destinations.

The Facebook-centric campaign (app no …

The past year has been an interesting and very successful one for Simpliflying with a number of new client acquisitions and tons of exciting free resources such as infographics and Top 10 case-packs posted regularly to the blog amongst other things. At the brink of the new year, we relive ten of the most popular articles on SimpliFlying in 2011:

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles” campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find …

If you still need proof of whether social media matters or not, you only have to look at the turnout for this year’s votes for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence. By the time voting closed after 2 weeks of stiff competition, more than 30,000 votes had been submitted from over 4500 cities. And this was after having shortlisted the Top Nominees from close to 60 nominations. The finalists for each category have been announced and they’ll face off in Amsterdam on October 10.

The innovations begin

When airlines initially began their adventure on the socialscape, it was all about about feeling their way about on the social platforms of their choice. The primary focus at the outset was first, discovering how to drive traffic and building a fan-base, followed by the more important aim of utilizing the platform for customer engagement and provide them a real-time medium of information-dissemination and customer service. Slowly, however, they realized that social platforms could also aid them in driving revenue. Flash sales, deals and contests became popular to attract more customers. However, the real innovations were still some time away.

A changing landscape

That time, it seems, has …

The buzz is palpable! After a heady round of nominations (69 nominees in 10 days) we’re down to the fun bit – the real voting to shortlist the Top 3 who’ll be invited to Amsterdam on October 10th for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media. Amazingly, we received more than 5000 votes in the first 36 hours from more than 1400 cities across the world. Huge, huge numbers! And they’re growing astronomically each day!

To acquaint you better with the nominees in each category of the awards, we’ll be posting case-packs on our SlideShare channel for each of the 5 categories of awards detailing what makes each nominee so special and why they’re in the final list of nominees (the initial list had over 60 candidates!). The campaigns that clinched each airline its position of prestige will be illustrated in detail. We hope you enjoy going through them and revelling in the reflected brilliance of their innovativeness, cleverness and sheer chutzpah.

The first case-pack has 5 case-studies, each illumninating the campaigns of Top 5 nominees in the category “Best use of Social Media to drive Revenue”. As you’ll see, some, like Virgin America jumped …

Social technologies are gaining huge traction among airlines. There’s simply no denying it. A couple of months ago, we released an infographic that showed how airlines are dedicating resources to social media. Most major airlines, according to the infographic, already have social media teams in place – most are managing cross-departmental strategies. Some even have plans to expand their teams later this year. That infographic was deemed to be a truly important one as far as the topic of airlines in social media was concerned: it received over 100,000 views and was featured in a number of publications including twice on Mashable itself!
Make sense of the chaos
Now, to add to all the hullaballoo, it really doesn’t help that social technologies are not just adding newer features regularly, but new social technologies themselves are being launched a dime a dozen (any takers for Google+ in airlines?).

So if you’re an airline marketer and thinking really hard about which social technologies to adopt apart from the usual suspects, we have the perfect remedy for your troubles. In fact, even if you’ve figured out which social platforms to adopt, you might still be wondering how best to use them or …

Cathay Pacific has proven to be one of the better full-service airlines over the past few years at engaging customers through social media. While most airlines scoff at the notion of giving anything away for—gasp!!—free (!!!), Cathay hasn’t been afraid to do this. And of course given the collective time and effort made by contest participants, when just a few are going to receive anything, I’d hardly say that “free” is the proper classification.
Contests to engage and develop advocates
As an engagement strategy, I believe that contests are far underused, given that they require targeted customers to opt in, take action, and when employed strategically, turn those customers into brand advocates. Given that airline analysts can easily predict what capacity goes unfilled, and the contest can be restricted to giving away those seats that would likely leave empty anyway, airlines can get a great return without giving away much. After all, what is the incremental cost of a butt in a seat that would otherwise go empty—ten, twenty dollars, tops?

I was a huge fan of Cathay’s “Why I Love Japan” contest. They also had an innovative contest where participants submitted dessert recipes, with the winning concoction actually being …

Over the last year, Grabaseat from Air New Zealand (we’re BIG fans) has been creating waves for its reverse auctions. Now, it’s an advanced system that’s well integrated into the airline’s main website. At the same time, it’s getting complex and not something other airlines can replicate easily. But it wasn’t long before another airline in another corner of the world latched upon the idea in the simplest possible way!
A small airline makes a big splash
Estonian Air just held its first ever reverse auction, by merely posting on the wall latest prices for flight tickets for two persons on assigned Estonian Air flights with fixed route and dates. To announce his or her intention to buy the Facebook fan had to post: “I buy” or in Estonian “Ostan” on the wall post. That’s really as simple as it gets!

According to Gunnar Mägi, the Development and Marketing Director of Estonian Air, the social media channels are used as very effective information channels, but also as the sales channel. “Our social media channels are becoming as ideas laboratory, where we try new solutions and sales opportunities. Estonian Air will continue launching unique offers …

Airlines, as we all know, seem to have taken to social media like a fish takes to water. Well, almost. Over the last three months we’ve shared with you 40 case-studies that have revealed how airlines have used the predominant platforms of social engagement via our Top 10 Facebook, Twitter and Location-Based-Service Initiatives and Crowdsourcing case-packs.

It is now fitting that we take a look at how airports are managing their social engagement models. Our latest Top 10 presentation brings to you 10 11 case-studies that showcase the best airports from around the world in terms of how well they’re evolving and adapting to newer technologies of driving customer engagement.
The Invisible Wall
No, this is in no way related to Harry Potter and Platform 9 and 3-quarters. What I refer to here is the seamless airport experience that leads most passengers to view the airport and airline as the same entity. Most airports would now like their passengers to be able to identify the invisible wall that delineates the airport experience from that of the airline.
This is important primarily because of two reasons:

Individuality: Most passengers probably …

As airlines continue to grow into the social media age, there seems to be a common, clumsy mistake that will likely become a major point of contention in this space:  a call to action without a communicated incentive.

Halfway through my flight from Washington (IAD) to Seattle last week, I received a special surprise along with my ginger ale…a napkin that doubled as the most useless piece of marketing communication I’d ever received:

Umm…well, I don’t really need any more friends, thanks.

It must have been my lucky day, because after I spilled my drink and grabbed my napkin to clean up, I found the second most useless piece of marketing communication I’d ever received on the back!

Why? Are you going to help me play the stock market?
Innocent though it may be, this United napkin is a classic example of communication without a point. Without making any effort to communicate a single benefit the passenger will receive in exchange for following the call to action, it goes beyond my reason why any passenger would rush to turn on their smart phones upon landing …